By KYIV. Nov 13 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The mining and metallurgical group Metinvest proposes to allow the use of Russian rubles frozen in its accounts after the start of the war to help the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Vodoviz, head of the project office of the general director of Metinvest Holding LLC, has said.
“There is a big question with the fact that there are a lot of prohibitions during the war, I’m not even saying that we have 160 million dollars in the equivalent of rubles frozen in our accounts. Unfreeze them, say: all the rubles are for the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” he said at a discussion Success Formula for Ukraine organized by NV.
According to Vodoviz, the resolution of this issue is being postponed due to the fear of government decision-makers being accused of illegal actions.
“Nobody wants… to take responsibility. Because again: rubles, a toxic scheme, now they will come (inspectors and law enforcement officers) – there are no people ready to make a decision,” the Metinvest representative says.
Among other problems, he called problem No. 1 – “where to get people to run factories.” Vodoviz clarified that the number of Metinvest employees due to the war has decreased from 150,000 to 60,000, and the factories are now operating at 20% capacity.
“We have no idea how to get these people back… There are no incentives for them,” the representative of the group said.
Metinvest is a vertically integrated group of mining and metallurgical enterprises. The group’s enterprises are located mainly in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
